I got gutsy and entered my county fair contest, however not feeling 100% confident on my fondant skills I decided to enter the buttercream&royal icing division. Now, I am so dead set on making a cherry blossom themed cake and wanted to know if anyone has attempted this WITHOUT any fondant. MY idea is to make all the blossoms in royal icing, and then pipe the tree branches onto the cake with icing. Does this sound like a bad idea? Any thoughts?
Hi,
I actually did this exact cake. I haven't ventured into fondant yet, and I wanted to do something extra special for a "final project cake" for my second Wilton cake class. I scoured the internet for days looking at pictures, and almost all were fondant. I just decided to suck it up and do it. It worked out really well. The blossoms were royal icing that I actually spray painted with the Wilton spray cans, and the tree and branches were buttercream. While I was in the class putting all of this together, I didn't like the way that the regularly-piped branches and trunk looked. So, I got creative and used one of my dry paint brushes to add bark-like texture to the tree. You can see the cake in my pictures if it helps.
SweetsbySouthernBelle
Thank you, yes...I will definantly take a look at your profile. And yes, I searched everywhere and I've only seen fondant ones. Registration was actually right at the end of my wilton course 2..by now I've completed the Fondant&Gumpaste course and regret not entering the fondant division. I'll give it a shot & like my instructor said "hey you've only lost $1 for the entery" haha 
Quite do-able! #104 tip and you're good to go.
Thank you, Brevity I'll be making the blossoms ahead of time out of royal icing. I'm still more or less worried on the look of the branches.
Good luck with the fair entry.. I know how you feel. I enter in the State Fair every year.. Speaking of Cherry Blossoms, this was my entry in 2008 (I think)... All fondant, inside was Italian Cream Cake..
WOW...very nice cake! I'm sure this look can only be obtained with fondant, my entry will be buttercream&royal icing only. Great Job
You can absolutely put royal icing flowers on buttercream! Good Luck!
Royal isn't going to melt on the buttercream. It may soften, but as long as the cake isn't closed up in an air tight container with the royal icing flowers, and the flowers have been completely dried before putting them on the cake, you shouldn't have any problems.
http://www.bakedecoratecelebrate.com/projects/cherryblossomcake.cfm
I did a cherry blossom cake in all butter cream. Once the frosted cake was cooled, I made the flowers by pipping 5 small dots and dragging them in towards the center so the frosting would be thinner towards the middle. I then finished them with 5 tiny dots of brown. I made the flowers, then added the branches where they looked best, but you could also do it the other way around. 
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